Battle Pod

of her house. He grinned at the image. He grinned thinking how his ex-wife would scream and scream. She might even melt in remorse and crawl to him on her hands and knees. Maybe right there out in the open, with blood dripping down the side of the house, he would take her and—

“You put something in my food,” Blackstone said.

Three-star Commissar Kursk was taller by a few inches than he was. She wore her cap’s brim low over her eyes. Her uniform was tight against her hips and her hands were firmly clasped behind her back. The way she stood at attention, if she’d had any kind of breasts at all, they would have jutted against her uniform. Instead, her badge shined in the harsh glare of the terminal’s lighting.

“This is hardly the place to discuss it,” she whispered.

Three red-suited PHC enforcers waited behind her. Five of the Commodore’s deck police waited along another wall. They all anticipated the first meeting with the cyborgs from Neptune. The cyborg command pod had docked with the Vladimir Lenin. Beyond the terminal door were clangs and the hissing of returning atmospheric pressure.

“That is against all regulations,” Blackstone hissed at her.

She gave him a stern glance. “Don’t be sentimental. Look at you now. You have rage in your veins, as a military man should. You wish to kill. That is good.”

“You’re drugging me,” he whispered.

“Nonsense, I’ve re-balanced you to what you were, a fighter and a warrior. These past weeks have seen a marked improvement in the Battlefleet. Morale has been boosted and fighting vigor almost returned to acceptable norms.”

“I forbid you to administer any more drugs.”

“You should fall on your knees and clasp me in gratitude for what I’ve done.” She gave him a vicious grin. “I always achieve results. It is why I am a three-star commissar and why PHC sends me to the hotspots. Rid yourself of weakness. The cyborgs arrive. We must present a united front against them.”

Blackstone had read Hawthorne’s secret report about Blanche-Aster’s clone, the one that had gone to Neptune System. Hawthorne had clearly stated the danger that the cyborgs possessed a chemical or mechanical way of altering a human’s loyalty. It’s why Blackstone had issued an order that no one board any cyborg battle pod.

“Against the cyborgs?” Blackstone asked. “What haven’t you told me about them?”

Commissar Kursk’s eyes narrowed as she faced the terminal entrance. “This is a critical juncture in Social Unity’s existence. The Highborn run amok. Now we have summoned the cyborgs to help us defeat our scientists’ genetic folly. There are some in PHC…”

She scowled.

Commodore Blackstone tugged his uniform straighter. He had noticed Commissar Kursk more, the shape of her hips, the tight fit of her boots and the way her butt swayed when she marched. It was as if she understood he watched her and secretly enticed him. She had stern features, but those features had appeal. If his ex-wife had taken lovers, why couldn’t he indulge in sins of the flesh with this arrogant PHC officer? He would make her whimper. Yes, he would show her the kind of officer he used to be in the old days. Even now as she scowled at the terminal entrance—

Blackstone shook his head. These weren’t his normal thoughts. She had drugged him. It had masked his malaise. It had heightened his anger and likely heightened his sexual desires. Wouldn’t she be surprised if he—

“No,” he whispered.

“What is wrong now?” she whispered.

A new clang told Blackstone that an inner hatch had opened. The cyborgs were almost inside the Vladimir Lenin’s pressurized quarters.

Commissar Kursk had just hinted at PHC rumors. Supreme Commander Hawthorne had warned him that Political Harmony Corps likely had a hidden method of communication with the cyborgs. Hawthorne believed it’s why the cyborgs had decelerated for the Mars System instead of for Earth as originally planned. Perhaps as importantly, Hawthorne suspected that PHC and the cyborgs had a hidden understanding between them. Hawthorne had warned him to be careful of the cyborgs and to use critical judgment in dealing with them.

Blackstone snorted quietly. Now the commissar had drugged him. The jackboot-wearing commissar he’d like to drag into his wardroom and—

The terminal entrance began to slide open. The cyborgs from Neptune were here.

Commodore Blackstone stood at attention, curious at what he’d see. Beside him, Three-star Commissar Kursk clicked her jackbooted heels together.

The terminal entrance slid open and an abomination strode onto the Vladimir Lenin. He, or perhaps it, wore a blue uniform like a large human, but he looked like a robot with polished metal parts and plastic flesh. His face seemed capable of only minimal expressions. His eyes were shiny, silver-metal orbs that moved smoothly in black plastic sockets. He was bald like Blackstone, and he was taller than Commissar Kursk. There was a sense of great weight about him, as if he was solid metal, and yet he moved with a predator’s grace.

Behind the chief cyborg were three taller, elongated monstrosities of flesh and graphite-bones. They were too long-limbed, and with every motion, they made faint whirring sounds of motorized joints. They had armored bodies and had dead faces that they wore like masks. Their incurious eyes held inhumanity and something worse. They seemed like quickened, mechanical zombies, with tiny hints of their lost humanity. Blackstone had never felt such a chill in his heart. Those hints of humanity looked out of the cyborg pupils as a screaming prisoner might, trapped in Hell.

Commissar Kursk gasped, and she might have staggered back. Blackstone grabbed her elbow, steadying her. Then he stepped forward and saluted crisply. He wanted to order the deck police to draw and fire until nothing but smoldering electronics and twisted metal parts lay before him. He doubted, however, that his five MPs and the three PHC enforcers would win a gun-battle with these things. The Highborn were out there, conquering Inner Planets. Now Social Unity had called for deadly allies to help tip the balance. Blackstone suppressed a shudder of horror. Sweet bones of Marx, was Hawthorne mad? Social Unity should unite with the Highborn to exterminate every infestation of these mechanical terrors.

“Welcome aboard the Vladimir Lenin. I am Commodore Blackstone, the commanding officer of the Social Unity Battlefleet Mars.”

“I am Toll Seven,” the chief cyborg said in a modulated voice. It only hinted at machinery, but it lacked emotive inflection. There was power in the voice, but a coldly logical power that would likely ignore any appeals to love, hope or mercy.

Blackstone hated the voice as a new dread formed in him of this Toll Seven. Humanity had searched its nightmares and foolishly manufactured this thing. It was inhuman, nonhuman. It was an alien. This was madness.

Blackstone had to concentrate to listen, as Toll Seven was still speaking.

“We have arrived to achieve victory for Social Unity. Therefore, it is imperative that we commence with the battle plan.”

Blackstone felt as if he was floating outside his body. He was looking at the other cyborgs, the elongated things with whiplash limbs, limbs that seemed abnormally strong. Who would have ever agreed to let technicians tear away their humanity to be rebuilt as that? How had the scientists in Neptune found volunteers? It was incomprehensible.

The Commodore was surprised to hear he was saying, “It has been an incredibly long journey for you. Would you like to rest first?”

“Logic dictates an immediate attack,” Toll Seven said. “…mingling to initiate friendship can commence upon final victory.” The chief cyborg thereupon smiled, revealing evil, steel-colored teeth.

Certainly, Toll Seven must have meant the smile as a friendly gesture. To Commodore Blackstone it seemed like a grin from a ghoul about to feast on the living.

-11-